Seduce and Rescue

He came to a halt and turned to face her. “How did you do that?”

She wiggled her eyebrows. “You twitched when I said the word south. And you don’t have a Southern drawl, so I knew it wasn’t South Carolina.”

He … twitched? “Huh,” he grunted, the only way he could convey a grudging respect for her. No one had ever read him like that.

“Omigosh, that was fun. Okay, what city? Gosh, I don’t know very many cities in South Dakota. I know about Mount Rushmore, and the Black Hills, and Crazy Horse.”

“You’ve never heard of it.” He barely remembered it. He remembered shoveling snow, taking out the trash, homework. But not playing with friends. His only memories before that were of sitting around in the hospital waiting room.

Lily shrugged one shoulder. “I still want to know. Is it Sioux Falls?”

He sighed. If he didn’t answer, he figured she’d bug him until he did. “Belle Fourche. It’s in the northwest part of the state,” he continued, as she opened her mouth. “Just north of the Black Hills National Forest.”

“Belle means beautiful in French. I bet it’s beautiful country up there.”

“I guess.” He’d been too desperate to get away to care. He’d joined the air force right out of high school, and could count on one hand the number of times he’d been home since.

“Are your parents still there?”

They weren’t the snowbird type. It would take an act of God to pry them out of their house. His mom with her blank stare spent her life in the kitchen, cooking and cleaning, and his father sat coldly at the table with his paper.

“I’m sorry.” Lily squeezed his arm. “Have they … passed on?”

He resumed his mission in the small pets section. “They’re fine.” As far as he knew. Last time he’d received a letter from his mother was seven months ago. Right after Christmas. After he’d sent his usual card with a check.

“Any brothers or sisters?”

Ethan gritted his teeth as a familiar pang hit his chest. “What is it with you? What do you care?”

Lily stopped in her tracks and pulled her hand away. “Oh, Ethan. Your aura just now. I’m sorry I brought up something so painful.”

Denying the pain was on the tip of his tongue. But for some reason he couldn’t. Without a word, he continued down the main aisle.

Lily caught up to him and again slipped her arm through his. “So, what do you do in the air force?”

He raised a brow.

“Oh, right. Three guesses. Okay, fighter pilot.”

He shrugged. “Was. I’m an air combat instructor now.”

“Air combat? As in teaching maneuvers? Like the Red Baron?”

“Lily.” Thankfully, they’d reached the back of the store. He turned left. “We don’t have to do the whole get-to-know-each-other thing.”

“Eeethan.” She said his name as if he’d just burped the alphabet at the queen’s tea. “Of course we do. But I’ll tell you about me for a little while.”

He almost stopped her. But she was going to chatter about something, so he might as well … Okay, so he was curious.

“I grew up all over the West Coast. San Fran, L.A., San Diego. And everywhere in between. It was usually just my mom and me. But sometimes we lived with my mom’s boyfriends.”

Lily gasped and disappeared down an aisle to the right. “Omigawd, Ethan. They have Halloween costumes for pets.”

Wait a minute. What about her mom’s boyfriends? Why had she said the word boyfriend as if it was cow dung? Had any of them hurt her? Ethan pulled to a stop when he spied her on a side aisle holding up a devil costume and a bear in a red T-shirt.

“Wouldn’t Humphrey look adorable as Winnie the Pooh?”

She was insane. That was the only explanation. “You didn’t finish.”

“Finish?” She put the costumes back and returned to his side.

“About your mother’s boyfriends.”

“Not much to tell.” Lily changed directions again to stroll down the main aisle, and he followed. “I never knew my dad. My mom was really young when she found out she was pregnant with me, and she said he freaked.”

Ethan wondered which was worse—his father or no father?

“I think his family sent her some money, and she went to college. It was just me and her for a while until … she fell in love with this guy and seemed to just go crazy. She quit a good job, moved to be with him, and then it didn’t work out. She was crushed.” Lily stopped and looked at Ethan. “But you know what’s crazy? A few years later, she did it again.”

“So, that’s why you moved around a lot?”

Lily shrugged. “I didn’t mind. Every new city was an adventure. A chance to see what fate had in store for me in each new place.”

Karma. Fate. Who lived their life like that? “So, did karma tell you to buy an herb shop in Vegas?”

Her smile faltered and she hitched her purse higher on her shoulder. “I came out here with my best friend right after high school. He wanted to be a croupier and I …” She gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I went to massage school.”

Ethan scowled, certain there was more she wasn’t telling him. But they’d finally located the small pet cages. Then there was bedding. And that house he’d agreed to. And Lily loaded one of those hollow plastic balls an animal could roll around in into the cart, as well.

“Can we go now?” he asked.

“You really hate shopping, don’t you?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

She shook her head. “Theo didn’t. He loved shopping with me.”

“Theo was your friend?”

She bit her lip and Ethan wanted to soothe it with his thumb. “And my husband.”

Husband? She was married?

“He was killed in Iraq five years ago.”

Killed. Guilt oozed past the wall of Ethan’s perfectly legitimate detachment. She’d been so young to be widowed. “I’m sorry.” He looked into her eyes and then couldn’t look away. All he could think about was that horrible cliché about drowning in pools of … something. But that’s what it felt like. They were exactly the turquoise color of the Caribbean.

Thankfully, she broke eye contact and said, “It’s okay.”